Items filed under: Links

Nick Shinn, a talented type designer based in Toronto, regularly posts essays about type and design on his site which have appeared in various design magazines. My favorite is “The Golden Age of Lettering” (big surprise).

Peter Bilak, creator of the extensive Fedra family and based in The Hague, has a large collection of critical essays and articles on his foundry’s website, many written by him. He also co-founded dot-dot-dot magazine. When does this guy have time to design type?

Los Angeles-based illustrator, lettering artist and type designer Leslie Cabarga is also a prolific writer. His first book, which he started writing as a teenager, is still the definitive history of the Fleischer Brothers animation studio. In his latest book, Logo, Font, and Lettering Bible, he seems to reveal all the tricks in his bag. Highly recommended.

David Steinlicht is a graphic designer and illustrator here in St. Paul. He also does some very funny cartoons on his website, allsmall.net. Not to be missed is his series called On My High Horse, which is a bit like a blog in cartoon form (though I’m sure David would never call it that).

Dan Picasso (yes, that’s his real name) is an illustrator who divides his time between Marathon, Texas and Minneapolis. He’s something of an old car buff (he owns a ’56 Olds 88 that looks like it just drove off a showroom floor) and does his illustrations the old-fashioned way, with an air-brush, paint and paper.

Alfredo Zelcer was my boss when I worked as a designer on TWA Ambassador magazine many years ago. His website is a recent development and shows just a tiny glimpse of his talent. Update: Alfredo died in May 2011. His site has disappeared so I’ve removed the link, but his profile is still up at Facebook.

Brian Taylor’s Rustboy site chronicles the process of making a computer-generated movie on one’s own. What amazes me more than Taylor’s obvious talent is his resourcefulness. He reminds me that it’s not the tools as much as how you use them. [The Rustboy film was never finished and the site is sadly long gone, but you can see some test footage for the film here.]

Even though I’m not particularly into comics, I will read just about anything by Scott McCloud. His book, Understanding Comics, helps you understand a lot more than comics. I also enjoy following his Morning Improv in which he creates comic strips based on titles submitted by readers.

Typophile Forums is where most of the action is taking place these days. From newbies to seasoned type designers, they’re all here talking about type. I especially like hanging around the Type I.D. Board, where everybody wins as type nerds from all over the world compete to see who can identify typefaces the fastest.

Unlike Typophile, Typographica is a group blog featuring news and items of interest about type and typography. Fierce debates are sometimes lurking in the comments. Tip: You can always tell what topics are hot by watching the “Commented” box in the right column. Chief editor Stephen Coles promises more substantial features (like my recent interview with veteran type designer Phil Martin) to come.

My sister Ellen paints and her husband Randall sings. I helped them both with their websites, including doing the lettering for Randall’s logo. [Update: Randall’s site no longer exists so I linked to his YouTube page instead.]

Berlin-based Erik Spiekermann, designer of the ubiquitous Meta, has one called spiekerblog. According to a recent interview on typeradio, he created it so he wouldn’t have to answer so many emails asking the same questions over and over.

Finally, one of the first weblogs I ever knew about was Grant Hutchinson’s splorp.blog. As a type designer, he was responsible for a large portion of the old Image Club type library. Image Club is no longer around, but, after several changes of hands, many of their fonts still are available through Agfa Monotype, including his ever-popular Fajita. Grant is now at Veer in Calgary, Alberta, which he helped start up with his Image Club cohorts. [Update: Veer no longer exists, so I removed the link.]